earticle

영어

Abstract
As the popularity of traveling has progressed into an era of mass tourism, the number of Japanese visiting Korea has grown smoothly since 1999; more than 2 million Japanese are visiting Korea every year. This is excluding 2003, when Japanese overseas tours went into a self-discipline mode due to the influence of SARS. By going through rough periods due to mismanagement, the business of inbound tour has met a crisis they have not experienced before. They took decisive action to restructure and reduce the organization. However, ultimately they became bankrupt and went out of business which only served to aggravate the situation.
One of the principal causes of this situation is thought to be excessive competition in the low pricing of tour packages. This has caused the quick-returns policy and income has continuously decreased, giving negative effects to the inbound tours as the present condition does not go under the theory of statistics.
This thesis is written with the intention to analyze the structure of the inbound tour market in the view of an industry structure theory and thus, to disclose the cause of low priced tour packages. After thorough research and analysis, the causes of forming low prices have been found to be (1) the excessive numbers of companies derived from the ease of establishing a new business, (2) outdated business management that could not create a distinctive brand, and (3) the excessive full free-competition among tour agencies.
It is also seen that each tour agency may employ all possible means in the market to compete with other agencies. While the researcher was studying, it was seen that it would be crucial to investigate the cause of abnormal business behaviors or patterns. This is another subject to study in the future.